


Because I Am Not Myself, You See

by Lexalicious70



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 21:36:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10544738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexalicious70/pseuds/Lexalicious70
Summary: After a long day of bottling up their emotions to learn battle magic, an unexpected mix-up reveals feelings to both Quentin and Eliot in a way they never expected.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Blame it on the Queliot, that’s all I can say. This is for fun, not profit, and because several people on Tumblr requested it. Hope you enjoy!

Because I Am Not Myself, You See   
Author: Neptune_Rising70  
Fandom: The Magicians  
Characters: Eliot Waugh/Quentin Coldwater   
Rating: 18+ for language   
Word Count: 2,105  
Spoilers: For “Remedial Battle Magic: (S1 ep 11) (Slightly AU, they don’t go to Fillory right away after the night before.) This is pre-Queliot, but after the threesome. 

Because I Am Not Myself, You See   
By Neptune_Rising70 

They stood in a semicircle, hating and loving each other. 

After Quentin, Eliot, and Margo had woken up in a naked tangle of arms, legs, tousled hair, and sleep-warm skin, Eliot understood that they needed the emotion bottle spell more than ever. Yes, Alice was furious, Margo was pissed at Quentin for being pissed at her, and Quentin was drowning in guilt and shame over what he’d done, but what none of them knew is that Eliot remembered every kiss Quentin had given him, and everywhere his lips had touched still felt it, like the younger magician’s mouth had seared Eliot’s skin. 

Eliot would have much preferred to feel anger or shame than the anticipatory sense of loss that was filling him up now, the sense that something had slipped away from him before it could really start. Would he bottle it all up again if it meant he didn’t have to think about this anymore, on top of the ferocious headache that was barely allowing him to function? Fuck yes, he would. 

The group recited the spell and Eliot gasped as the little glass bottle in his hand filled up with a bright magenta liquid—his emotions, distilled down to a few ounces of fluid. Alice was saying something about Quentin now but Eliot didn’t pay much attention—she was always commenting on either him or on some other aspect of her life that wasn’t satisfying her—he was staring at the bottle in his hand and wondering if everyone else’s distilled emotions tasted as bitter as his did going down. 

A short time later they were back in the clearing for one more quick training session before they’d be bound for Fillory and the Beast. They ran through their lessons: shields, fireballs, blasting spells, without a break, for three hours. Penny, Alice, and Margo drifted away before time ran out, but Eliot and Quentin stayed, running drills over and over until Eliot paused to check his pocket watch. 

“Time’s up, Quentin.” Eliot said, snapping the watch’s case shut. A cold, fat drop of rain hit his wrist and he looked up at the lowering sky. 

“It’s starting to rain. We’re going to get wet.” 

“Then we really should get back and join the others.” Quentin fell into step behind Eliot and they headed up the path back toward the Physical Kids cottage. The rain grew heavier and the path turned slick with fallen pine needles and mud. Eliot’s boot slipped as he took a step and that long leg shot backwards, taking out Quentin’s knee. Quentin made a surprised sound as they fell down together in a heap and slid back down the path about ten feet, their limbs tangled. When they reached the bottom of the path, Eliot sat up and pulled himself free from Quentin. 

“That was very unexpected.” Quentin said as he got to his feet. 

“Quite.” Eliot nodded, but then became aware that the weight of his emotion bottle was no longer there. He touched his chest but it was gone. He glanced around and then Quentin was pointing. 

“Our emotion bottles came off.” He said. The two containers were laying a few feet from other. Eliot scooped them up and flicked mud from them. 

“This was closest to you. It must be yours.” He handed Quentin one of the vials and they uncapped and quaffed them. As the liquid slid down Eliot’s throat, he realized that it wasn’t bitter; it was hot, like liquefied cinnamon hearts mixed with a strong shot of bourbon. It bloomed boiling in his belly and then Quentin was gasping and groaning next to him. He staggered away a few feet, and then emotion, raw and painful and not his own, flooded Eliot’s consciousness: shame, anger, fear, and such a sense of loneliness that he took a ragged breath and burst into tears. He doubled over, his hands on his knees, knowing the mistake they’d made, and then Quentin was hitting his knees almost directly in front of him. 

“Oh God, oh God . . .” The younger magician whimpered, all his personal wards blasted away by the strong magic and the flood of Eliot’s emotions: agony over Mike, fear of the Beast, fear of himself, love for Margo, powerful in itself, and love for—

Quentin lifted his head, his dark eyes wide and teary. 

“El, you . . . you love me?” He put both hands to his chest as if he was trying to keep his heart from bursting through his rib cage, where it would probably feel no less raw and exposed than it did now. “You love me—” His expression dissolved into tears as a fresh wave of grief mixed with fear came over him. “You love me and you were ready to love him but now it’s shit, it’s all shit and you can’t fix it!” Quentin stared up at his friend, who shook his head as tears coursed down his face. 

“Why do you feel so alone?” Eliot whispered. He tried to straighten his spine but the emotions flowing through him took him to his knees. He knelt there in the mud as rain pelted down, soaking them both. “Why don’t you think you deserve any love that comes to you?” He half-swallowed another sob as awareness of Quentin’s feelings for him hit him like a punch to the gut. “Why don’t you think you deserve any love that I could offer you?” 

“I don’t know, I don’t . . .” Quentin covered his face with both hands, Eliot’s grief over Mike threatening to smother him under an avalanche of stored agony. “Is this what you’ve . . . how can you even . . .” He seemed unable to finish any thought and wrapped his arms around himself. While the circumstances over Mike’s death didn’t present themselves to Quentin, they didn’t have to—the raw emotion spoke for them. Quentin gasped in two deep breaths and then sobbed them out, releasing everything Eliot had kept tightly bottled since Mike’s death. 

Eliot watched Quentin sob and it filled him with empathy—an emotion he’d only had a passing acquaintance with the recent past and not at all since he’d had to destroy the man he’d been falling in love with. Quentin, however, apparently embraced it and it muted some of the terrible shame and self-doubt that was still flooding Eliot’s consciousness and he knee-walked forward, closing the space between them. 

“I’m sorry, Quentin! I’m sorry it hurts, I gave you the wrong fucking bottle, I’m sorry!” He wrapped his long arms around the smaller man and Quentin tried to push him away. 

“Don’t fucking touch me!” He said. “Don’t! You fucked it all up! It’s all shit! I’m shit . . .” Quentin gave Eliot one more halfhearted shove and then pitched forward to muffle his sobs against Eliot’s chest. Eliot held him, the rain tightening his dark curls and making Quentin’s hair limp and dark. He managed to get his long legs up under him as the spell began to fade and pulled Quentin up as well. 

“Come on, Q. We have to get back to the cottage.” He slipped both empty bottles in his pocket and put an arm around his sobbing friend and they managed to struggle back up the path to the house. It was empty, but there was a note on the bar from Penny that they had gone up to the main campus to retrieve something from the library and that they would regroup in an hour. Eliot deposited Quentin on the couch, where he sank down onto his side and went fetal. Eliot shuffled to the bar, poured each of them a shot of whiskey, and tugged Quentin back into a sitting position as he sat down next to him. 

“Here. Come on . . . you need it.” He coaxed, and Quentin took the shot, reflecting that Eliot’s emotions had burned a thousand times worse going down. They were finally fading now, and Quentin wiped his face with one shaking hand. 

“Eliot.” He said at last. “Jesus Christ, why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“And what good what that have done? It wouldn’t have brought him back, it wouldn’t have changed things for any of us.” Eliot took his shot, grimaced, and set the glass down. Quentin’s shame was still working its way through his system, or maybe it belonged to him. It was hard to tell: everything was tangling up inside him. Their mutual feeling for each other, exposed with the spell, now hung between them like something dangerous and tangible, like a grenade with the pin missing. 

“And what about last night?” Quentin asked, none of his usual verbal fumbling present. “That sure fucking changed things, didn’t it!” 

“It did. And now we both know it was more than booze and emotion bottles. Hooray.” 

“This isn’t funny.” Quentin closed his eyes. “But since we’ll probably be dead in the next few hours, maybe it doesn’t matter.” 

Eliot tipped his head back until it was resting on the back of the couch. 

“Quentin, considering everything that just happened, why do you think you can even begin to pretend I don’t matter to you?” 

Silence spun out between them and Quentin looked over at him. 

“What do I do about Alice?” He asked, and Eliot lifted his head. 

“Alice doesn’t seem to be open to sharing you. It’s understandable.” Eliot turned his amber gaze on Quentin. “If you were mine, I wouldn’t want to share you either.” 

“I don’t know what to do, El.” Quentin whispered, and Eliot shifted forward. The younger magician started to speak again and Eliot prevented it by kissing him directly on the mouth, a slow, coaxing kiss that Quentin began to return in spite of his confusion. After a moment, Quentin pulled back. 

“Why did you do that?” 

“Two reasons.” Eliot held up a long finger. “One, because what you said is true, we might be dead in a few hours and two,” another finger popped up—“Because now you know the truth and I can’t pretend anymore either.” 

Quentin pushed a lock of hair behind one ear. 

“And if we survive? What then? Do we go back to pretending?” He asked, and Eliot pulled the empty emotion bottles from his pocket. As Quentin watched, he set them on the table, picked up a heavy glass ashtray, and smashed them both. 

“Eliot!” 

“Fuck these bottles, and fuck pretending, Quentin! Are you really so naïve that you thought the spell is what caused last night to happen?” He gripped Quentin’s arms. “I love you. I love you whether my emotions are in a bottle or not! But much like the djinn we conjured recently, they’re out and they’re potentially dangerous!” 

“You know how I feel.” Quentin murmured. “But you also know that I’m fucked up and I don’t deserve—” 

“Fuck deserving too! Do any of us really deserve anything? Good or bad? Did Mike deserve to be made into a thrall and have his neck snapped? Did I deserve to have to be the one who did the snapping?” 

“No.” 

“Then worry less about what you think you deserve and more about what you really want. It’s the only way to truly discover what that is.” 

“I already know.” Quentin replied softly, and Eliot tilted his head slightly to one side. 

“Tell me.” 

But Quentin didn’t speak. Instead, he moved forward and slipped his arms around Eliot’s waist until his cheek was pressed against his chest. Eliot froze in surprise for a moment and then put his own arms around Quentin, resting his chin on top of Quentin’s head. The younger magician seemed to fit in Eliot’s embrace like he’d been tailor made for it. Eliot thought of his pocket watch, ticking away in his vest, eating up the time that would bring them face to face with the Beast. But Quentin’s heart, thumping steadily against his chest, was a timepiece all its own: the only one that had really mattered ever since Eliot watched Quentin cross the sun-drenched lawn of Brakebills, the one that undid and revealed him at the same time. 

Outside, the rain slackened and then stopped. Long fingers of sunlight made their way through the cottage windows and turned the shattered, empty remains of the emotion bottles into prisms that threw tiny rainbow patterns across the floor as Eliot closed his eyes and let the rhythm of Quentin’s heart turn his world on its axis. 

THE END


End file.
